I've been hunting SWIFT and central kansas for pheasant and quail for 8 plus years. When the economy dropped out, I havn t had the funds to head up there. Anybody around the hays area or philipsburg have a report they would share. I know philipsburg is more quail than pheasant, but I'm quail chaser at heart so its not a big deal. I hunt walk in unless I happen to meet a nice farmer.

Bird numbers are WAAAAAY Down state wide, We hunted 2000 acres opening weekend and saw less than 50 Pheasants total. This was in a area that is usually prime . NW of Great Bend. Never saw one quail. Two years of drought has taken its toll

Went out around Russel over Thanksgiving and hunted a day and a half and only saw 8 hens and one rooster, oh and one small covey of quail.

It will take several years for the pheasant numbers to come back *if* they ever do. The way a habitat is declining I'm not going to hold my breath. We may go the same way Iowa did. Quail are declining and will continue to do so until people realize that trees and not burning every 3 years of so are really hurting the quail.

If the biologists would just go back to the hay day of KS quail and look at airial photos I think they would see that trees and excessive underbrush was not nearly as prevelant as it is today. There were no "hinged" trees back then. But there were old fields with weeds in them, lots of hedge rows and brushy fence lines.